From time to time on all of these trips, something extraordinary happens. The kind of thing that puts life in perspective and allows us, a group of foreigners, to peer into the complexity of the subcontinent. Most of the time, these things can be loosely defined as “Indian Magic.” They’re moments in traffic or on particularly sharp curves in the mountain roads. They’re interactions people have with the physical space around us or with each other. They’re the sound of Garhwali echoing through steep valleys.

A different kind of extraordinary thing happened yesterday. A very intimate and personal thing, one with profound implications. Suman’s grandmother, known to all of us as “Dadi,” passed away.

Dadi was the valley’s oldest resident. During the funeral proceedings today, people did some serious thinking and concluded that she was at least 100, probably 101. She was born in a time before birth certificates, when aging was a feeling rather than a counting. It’s hard to know exactly how old she was, but at least 100. Old enough to have 4 children, 25 grand children, and more than 40 great grandchildren. Old enough to leave a mark on this place and its residents. Old enough to be Dadi.

Dadi is the familiar term for the mother of one’s father. It’s in some ways the most significant and tender title bestowed on a human in this culture. It’s reserved for the wise and strong of any given generation, the select few whose life includes the space for being a caregiver and advisor to dozens of young humans. Suman’s grandmother, the mother of his father, was the ultimate Dadi in a land of Dadis.

I’ll always remember Suman’s grandmother for her kindness. She had the sort of presence that made everyone feel comforted and cared for, even when her frail figure limited the amount she could actually do for others. She was present in a space in a way that few people know how to be these days. She shared that presence openly and wanted others to join her in it. Over the 10 trips CCS has taken to India and many weeks of time here for me, she shared hundreds of cups of chai, answered inumerable questions, provided the only known history of a lot of things that happened 100 years ago, and generally made everyone who came to her small, smoky room feel comfortable.

Once, before I started working for CCS, I was in a small car accident down in the valley below Agora. My forehead was split open on a metal barrier inside the old jeep I was riding in. Dadi didn’t eat until I was well enough to return to Agora and show her my stitches. She wanted me to know she was with me.

I’ll always remember Suman’s grandmother for her humor. Dadi was a funny lady. One time, a student was clearly afraid of fire during one of our visits to Dadi’s small room with its traditional hearth. The student was cautious around the open flame heating up the water for our chai. Dadi noticed right away. When the student was engaged in conversation with someone sitting in the opposite direction to her, Dadi quietly pulled a small burning stick from the fire and placed it just over the leg of the student. When the student noticed, she jumped and screamed. Dadi chuckled and asked her what she was afraid of. Another time, a student was leaning against one of the posts on the house’s porch as we prepared to leave Agora. Dadi snuck up behind her and used a shawl to tie the student to the post. “Hannah, you have dishes to wash tomorrow morning!” When I asked Dadi about COVID-19 she told me that she had refused the vaccine. “I told the doctors that they’d need to come back with a needle that could puncture bone because that’s all I have left – bones and achy joints. I didn’t want to break their needle.”

I’ll always remember Suman’s grandmother for her wisdom and her way of putting things. When I visited with her in January of this year, I asked her how she was feeling and wondered out loud whether I would see her again. She could sense the fear in my voice. “I am like the wind now. There’s so little left of my body. But, like the wind, I will go when it is time and I will come back again. Don’t bother missing the wind – it will always come back.”

Yesterday, a strong wind swept through the valley right around 6 PM. It was a startling wind, unlike any I can remember. There was thunder but no rain or lightning. The trees whistled and rushed. It was unlike any I can remember.

Yesterday, Dadi asked for chai for the first time in more than a week. After days of silent suffering, her tired body fighting off some mysterious illness or, maybe, just the ending pages, Dadi asked for her favorite drink. It was a moment of clarity that caught her son, Jagmohan, off guard. As he has for most of his 65+ years on the planet, Jagmohan collected the cups and pot he would use to make chai and walked out to rinse and fill his supplies. At around 6 PM Jagmohan walked back into the small, smoky room and Dadi was gone. A strong wind had come.

In my life, I have thought a lot about knowing a place. What does it mean to know it so well that you know where the rocks and branches and ferns and mushrooms should be? What does it mean to know where the fish should be hiding? Does that make us masters of those places? Dadi taught me a different question. Can a place know you?

When I last saw Dadi, Suman and Jagmohan were carefully lifting her from her woven bed so they could take her bedframe out to clean it. I saw a few spiders emerge from specific gaps and crevices. I could sense their disorientation. Where was the person they’d grown up below? I could sense that they knew Dadi. I walked off the porch, down to the stone verandah around Dadi’s house. There, Dadi’s garden lay in perfect rows of several varieties of vegetable and hot pepper. Until just a few weeks ago, Dadi was the only person who tended that garden. Until after she was 100, Dadi grew her own food and cooked and prepared it for herself. I noticed the way the weeds gave shade to the small plants, the way a patch of well-trodden grass grew between the different sections of the garden. It was clear that nature knew Dadi.

In today’s world, how often will nature really know a person? How often will a life be rooted so much in one place that it becomes indiscernable from it? I am not sure. But, yesterday and today, the value of such a life was abundantly clear. And, for all of us, a window opened. A window so wide that I don’t know what each of us might take from the perspective. The abundance of life. The strong wind.

As I watched Dadi’s funeral pyre burn by the banks of the Ganges this morning, I felt immense gratitude. Thank you, Dadi. You shaped this world that has cradled us for the past 10 days. The world that has made the CCS Global Education trips to India so valuable. We’ll always remember.